this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
951 points (98.7% liked)
Technology
59402 readers
2669 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah, I think you're confused 😉 There is no need for your friend to use a VPN to access your Jellyfin server. All you need to do is make it publicly accessible and tell him where to find it (the URL).
It can literally be as simple as setting up NAT on your router (commonly known as port forwarding, linking the IP of the Jellyfin server and it's port to a designated port on your router accessible via your public IP) and then giving your friend your public IP and the port that you opened. THIS IS HIGHLY DISCOURAGED THOUGH SINCE NOTHING IS ENCRYPTED.
It's best to setup either Dynamic DNS (usually free, but you don't get your own domain name, usually just a subdomain under their domain name) or buy your own domain name for cheap (like $10-$30 USD/year) and setup your A records (and CNAME records if you want) in the hosted DNS section. Once you have DNS working then setup a reverse proxy using something like Caddy (simple), Traefik (more complex), or Nginx (a full blown, complex web server) and Certbot/LetsEncrypt. SSL certs and reverse proxies can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but Caddy makes it dead simple.
From there just give your friend your URL (https://jellyfin.yourserver.com or however you have it setup). He puts that in the connection box in the Jellyfin UI and it should work as intended.
Does it matter if your domain is on shared hosting already? Like, I’ve got kaitco.net, so I should be able to set up jellyfin.kaitco.net and the A and/or CNAME in the hosted DNS? Or, would I need to purchase a new one that’s not already hosted on any server already?
Thank you for answering my asinine questions about this btw 😅
It's perfectly fine to use a subdomain of kaitco.net 😉 Happy to help, I've been doing this for years.